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Monday, 5 December 2011

Faith and Reason

Last week was the feast of Andrew the Apostle. Maybe because I share his name, or maybe not, I had a discussion about him that day, feeding off Ecclesiasticus 14:20.

Happy is the person who meditates on wisdom
and reasons intelligently

We all worked through some of the pros and cons of privileging faith or reason, and I brought up the tradition of faith seeking understanding. Eventually, it came around to Andrew. The key question I asked was about his initial encounter with Jesus, way back before signs or crucifixions or resurrections.

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which is translated Anointed*).

I'm going to impose some titles here to help bring out my question.

Andrew starts with Rabbi John, then spends an afternoon with Rabbi Jesus, and finishes his afternoon by bringing his brother to meet Messiah Jesus. What was the reasoning that took place to change Andrew from calling Jesus a teacher to calling him the Christ? He went to Jesus looking for rabbinic reasoning, but got more than that.

We'll never know, of course, because no one took minutes of the proceedings. So it's just speculation and hypothesis for us, with a healthy dose of reasoning intelligently.